News Release

University of Michigan offers free interactive CD-ROM for addressing health disparity.

September 26, 2005 press release from the University of Michigan School of Public Health

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-- The recent disaster in New Orleans has emphasized the health and social disparities that underlie American society. Now more than ever, a shared understanding is needed of what constitutes health disparity and the impact of different measures of disparity on policy. A useful tool can be found in the just-released Measuring Health Disparities interactive CD-ROM based course, available at no charge from the Michigan Public Health Training Center (MPHTC). This course is a collaboration of three centers at UM SPH: the MPHTC, the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, and the Prevention Research Center of Michigan.

This CD-ROM is a practical guide to applying concepts and methods in measuring and addressing health disparities. Through an engaging and entertaining format that requires on average three hours to complete, it establishes a common ground for our efforts to monitor and eliminate health disparities.

Measuring Health Disparities is designed to help broad audiences understand and participate effectively in efforts to reduce and eliminate health disparities. Via its self-paced format, participants will first examine the language of health disparity to come to a common understanding of what that term means. Then they walk through the steps of calculating different measures of health disparity and learn the implications, strengths, and weaknesses of choosing one measure over another. There are interactive exercises and review questions for each part of the CD-ROM to help guide and reinforce learning. Participants develop a common language for understanding health disparities, what various measures of health disparities reveal, and how to calculate these measures.

“With such a common ground we can more effectively mount efforts to monitor and reduce health disparities,” says George A. Kaplan, Ph.D., director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at UM SPH and a leading health disparities researcher.

This course offers continuing education credits for a variety of health professionals, and an MPHTC certificate for successful completion. The certificate identifies relevant core competencies in population-based health practice.

To aid users and make the training more dynamic, Measuring Health Disparities has a companion website http://measuringhealthdisparities.org. Through this website, users can register their CD-ROM, access the password, apply for continuing education credits, and post comments and errors. The blogs on this website provide a forum for discussing data, initiatives, research, and methods in measuring health disparities.

Intended audience and course summary

Measuring Health Disparities will be accessible to a broad audience. Containing audio and interactive elements, the CD-ROM focuses on some basic issues for public health practice – how to understand, define and measure health disparity. The material is divided into four parts.

Parts One and Two review what health disparities are, how they are defined, and provide an overview of common issues faced in measuring health disparities. Part Three is technical and introduces users to a range of health disparity measures, providing advantages and disadvantages of each. Part Four discusses how best to use different measures to communicate and evaluate health disparity in our communities. Parts Three and Four are more technical and it is helpful though not necessary to have a background in statistics, epidemiology or other sciences for ease of understanding.

About the instructors

John Lynch and Sam Harper are epidemiologists who were at the University of Michigan 's School of Public Health and Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health during the development of this CD-ROM. They share research interests in measuring population health and health disparity as well as lifecourse processes that influence individual and population health. Drs. Lynch and Harper are now at McGill University , Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health.

To order copies of Measuring Health Disparities

Measuring Health Disparities is free of charge and can be ordered from the Michigan Public Health Training Center through the online registration system or by phone.

Online: http://measuringhealthdisparities.org
Phone: 734-615-9439

Continuing education credits are offered for nurses, health educators (CHES) and physicians for either Parts 1 and 2 or all four parts. A completion certificate from the Michigan Public Health Training Center is also offered on the same basis.

This project was made possible with funding from MPHTC, which is funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, and the Prevention Research Center of Michigan, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Contact: Dina Kurz, Associate Director, Michigan Public Health Training Center
Phone: 734-615-9440
E-mail: dkurz@umich.edu

Order the CD-ROM course for free online or by phone: 734-615-9439.